2025 didn’t exactly start with a bang. The whole family was ill during the holidays and into the first week of the new year with a short respite on New Year’s Eve when we had visitors from Sicily and had a lot of fun celebrating with them.

But slowly, life is returning to the old rhythms and the usual busyness. I’m working on several exciting projects, including revisions for the Slovene edition of my middle-grade novel.

In the meantime, I published a couple of things. In December, the British Isles SCBWI online magazine Words & Pictures published my Christmas themed children’s story, The Lost Glove (at the bottom of the page). My article on how to write compelling stories with quiet and shy protagonists is forthcoming in one of its Spring issues.

My academic paper on the contribution of translingual writers to the diversity of the British and American children’s book markets was finally published by LOGOS. The paper was initially written for an open access journal but since they received too many papers, they were forced to change the scope of their special issue. It took a while to find another journal to publish it and then six more months before it went through the peer-reviewing process, edits and last minute tweaks.

I’ll be visiting London in February after four years. I’ve missed it, and I’m really looking forward to seeing it again. The last time I was there was on Brexit Day and just before Covid, so it was a tad bitter-sweet. I’m afraid my itinerary is much too crammed for the four days I’ll spend there, but I’ll make it work.